Parental unemployment and children's educational attainment
How big is the role of aspirations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5610179 |
|---|---|
| Authors | G Mari (0000-0001-8557-5337, Erasmus University Rotterdam Rotterdam The Netherlands, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 74 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 799-807 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-4446.13037 |
| PMID | 37277944 |
| OpenAlex | W4379508910 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 27 |
Children exposed to parental unemployment have been found to lag behind in school, but research has struggled to pin down the underlying explanation. One hypothesis is that parental unemployment may dampen children's aspirations to do well and go far in school. Yet, few studies on parental unemployment have relied on actual measures of children's aspirations or devised a formal analysis of this mechanism. Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study (Waves 1-12, N = 1067), I investigate the role of educational aspirations in children's General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment. I compare adolescents exposed to parental unemployment before or only after the typical age at which GCSE exams are taken. In adjusted models, children exposed to parental unemployment before their GCSEs are around 6 percentage points less likely to attain any GCSE qualification by age 17. On average, children have high educational aspirations, although intentions to enrol in college or university are relatively lower among children exposed to an early spell of parental unemployment. Nevertheless, a hypothetical intervention setting these aspirations to the same level for all children only accounts for a modest portion of the educational penalty tied to an early spell of parental unemployment. Several sensitivity and robustness tests support this conclusion. This note seeks to stimulate more research on the mechanisms underpinning the intergenerational effects of unemployment. Findings cast doubts on the idea that children's aspirations, the target of broader policy discourse and interventions, are a crucial part of the equation
Certificate · Demographic economics · Developmental psychology · Economic growth · Economics · Educational attainment · Intervention (counseling · Psychological intervention · Sociology · Spell · Unemployment · Youth unemployment · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
Making Sense of Sensitivity
A Structural Approach to Selection Bias
Principles of confounder selection
A general approach to causal mediation analysis.
Parental Job Loss and Children's School Performance
Raising Aspirations and Higher Education
Interpreting OLS Estimands When Treatment Effects Are Heterogeneous
Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture
The heterogeneous effects of parental unemployment on siblings’ educational outcomes
Parental Job Loss and Children's Educational Attainment in Black and White Middle‐Class Families
Adolescents' future in the balance of family, school, and the neighborhood
Educational Aspirations and Attitudes over the Business Cycle
Effects of the Great Recession on Child Development
Structural and motivational mechanisms of academic achievement
The Far-Reaching Impact of Job Loss and Unemployment
Why Parental Unemployment Matters for Children's Educational Attainment
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |